Losing Touch
by arbitraryink
Summary: A collection of drabbles and ficlets written for Team Rikash at Goldenlake's SMACKDOWN 2010.
1. Losing Touch

Written for the fanfiction SMACKDOWN at fiefgoldenlake . proboards . com

Disclaimer: All characters and concepts belonging to the Tortallan universe are the sole property of Tamora Pierce. No copyright infringement is intended, nor will this project be used for profit of any kind. Title of the fic comes from the Killers song of the same name.

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Title: Losing Touch  
Rating: G  
Length: 489  
Competitor: Rikash  
Round/Fight: 1/B  
Summary: In Tortall, the dead are walking.

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It happens again the third year after she has her shield. Perhaps the time in between – the ten long years of labour and sweat and tears – was only in preparation. Preparation for what, she doesn't know, but she understands the need to be ready.

_"They are coming,"_ says the voice in her head, and Kel doesn't need to ask what or whom because already she has seen the dead walking in the palace grounds. There are men in the stable who pass through walls that weren't built when they were alive, and women in the gardens sitting in thin air where benches had once been so many years ago. A hundred palace servants do the same jobs as others, continuing the work they did before death, and a hundred pages and squires resume meals in the mess, taking up so little space on their invisible benches near the wall that the live ones training barely notice the others again.

But Kel notices, and she watches.

Late one evening after Midwinter, she is making her way back to her rooms from Neal and Yuki's, silent and pondering because her old friend Seaver of Tasride, dead in the Scanran War, was playing chess in the corner with Esmond, drowned when the coastal Fief Nicoline flooded its lower levels. Neal, Kel, and Yukimi who'd joined them had gone on with their evening, not acknowledging those in the corner, but on her way back to bed, Kel wonders why she can see them but they can't see her. From her shadowy doorway comes a response she is somehow expecting –

"Their spirits are drawn to pleasantries they recall," says the Stormwing, wings clicking as he shifts his weight from one bare foot to the other. "They cannot see you, but they can see many nights from their life playing games for a few extra coppers."

For what seems like the tenth time that week, she asks, "I know you, Rikash Moonsword. How is it that you can see me while the others can't? Is your former immortality the reason?"

He does not answer her question, but instead replies, "You will not see them gone until the barrier is rebuilt."

The barrier, of course, is the wall that separates the Peaceful Realms from the rest of the universe. Kel doesn't know why it is weakening, but when she dreams at night the voice in her head says _"They are coming"_ and she knows it is her mission.

What puzzles her most is that every night they meet, Rikash Moonsword tells her that 'they' will not leave until the barrier is restored. She may not know what is meant for her to do, but she knows that he is the only one with answers, as long as Rikash can see her, he cannot be dead. This is her personal mantra, her only hope in the days that the dead walk the realm.

_He is not dead._


	2. A Child's Dream

Written for the fanfiction SMACKDOWN at fiefgoldenlake . proboards . com

Disclaimer: All characters and concepts belonging to the Tortallan universe are the sole property of Tamora Pierce. No copyright infringement is intended, nor will this project be used for profit of any kind.

Title: A Child's Dream  
Rating: G  
Lenth: 275 words  
Competitor: Rikash  
Round/Fight: 1/B  
Summary: When she was young, he would come in the night.

The same year her family returned from the Islands, the Immortals War struck Tortall with a vengeance. While she hadn't been in the thick of things, Kel had seen the aftermath – the slow reparation of damage to countryside and city alike; the monuments erected in Corus, Caynn, and Legann, commemorating the fallen; the trials of the caught pirates and renegades of Carthak and the Copper Isles.

Perhaps even worse than all of this were those Immortals who remained in Tortall when the war finally ended. On Mindelan land were spidrens – this she knew for certain – and probably a hundred other creatures, malicious and unpleasant, hiding in the dark.

At night she could feel them, sensed something in the forest and along the road, and she prayed that the villagers would remain safe in their unguarded homes. They were bad at night, but they came in sleep too.

His wingspan was the width of her little room, and the moonlight glinted from steel feathers as he paced near her bed. "I died," he would tell her, "because I am a traitor."

His hair was long and matted, but Kel knew he was once beautiful, that at some time in the long past his blond braid was smooth and shining and the grime caked onto his body was a figment of imagination. She would dream of him at night, but when the dawn first crept into the kingdom from its slumber he would vanish into the budding light, nothing in her room but a whisper of a promise – "You will be saved."

But soon she was no child of ten, and pages have no time for dreams.


	3. For Reasons Unknown

Written for the fanfiction SMACKDOWN at fiefgoldenlake . proboards . com

Disclaimer: All characters and concepts belonging to the Tortallan universe are the sole property of Tamora Pierce. No copyright infringement is intended, nor will this project be used for profit of any kind. Title of the fic comes from the Killers song of the same name.

Title: For Reasons Unknown  
Rating: G  
Length: 320  
Competitor: Rikash  
Round/Fight: 1/B  
Summary: Rikash reflects on Kel.

There are many things Rikash doesn't know, too many to dwell on; indeed, too many to fathom. What he most of all doesn't know is why he is drawn to Keladry of Mindelan. She is a mortal and a human and a noblewoman. She is not pretty and she is not small. She is a knight who hates his kind because of their very nature, and they hate her because of hers.

And yet, there is a force like magnetism that keeps pulling him to her. In the mornings, she practices with her glaive, and he perches on the roof to watch her as she moves from one pattern dance into the next. Afternoons she is in the courtyards of her refugee camp, teaching the quarterstaff to the new residents and encouraging the others as they steadily improve – and he is on the camp wall, peering down at her with eyes as sharp as an eagle's, metal wings clicking as he paces and stares.

She is hard-working and patient but aside from what he sees, there is little else in her that he admires. For a long time he ponders her, sifting through memories until his conscience can catch up. When it does, it surprises him, and his eyes follow her as she greets messengers on horseback arriving with orders from Mastiff.

It is her spirit, he decides, the fire in her heart that will not be unlit, and the fervor to be great that he has seen before. She is not small and she is not pretty, but she is like Maura in her soul. He is denied from seeing Maura – that was his bargain with the Black God for return to life – but this Lady Knight is similar enough that she just might do.

He holds no affection for her yet, but Rikash is prepared to wait, because he believes that even the quiet ones have steel inside.


End file.
